Search results

Regardless of how they are budgeted, information technology (IT) costs must be paid. Most schools offer some computing services at no cost to the individual or unit and some that are charged back to users and units. Typically, common good services are centrally funded, and services that differentially benefit specific individuals or units are charged for. How services are funded often reflects a school’s philosophy about IT and about finances. Preferably, IT funding mechanisms deliberately help shape and influence an institution’s IT and services philosophy, as opposed to an IT or service philosophy being unintentionally shaped by fiscal policies that follow no particular strategy. Levying fees to users on an individual or departmental basis may yield a different demand and expectation of IT services than when costs are borne by a central budget. Quantity and quality, degree of centralization, and administrative complexity of services are major variables in determining funding. Also at stake is the degree to which an institution wishes to endorse, suppress, control or expand IT services. These issues are specifically illustrated through a case study of the formulation of a new budget and cost accounting model to both finance an institution‐wide network upgrade and to maintain that network.

This paper aims to examine the dynamism of causal relationships among cloud computing (CC) adoption factors in the Indian context, considering the perspectives of both the cloud adopter and cloud provider.

The case-study method has been used to understand the dynamics among the factors. Using data from specific cases in India, causal loop diagrams (CLDs) have been developed. System dynamic modeling (SDM) and simulation are used to study the relationships and their effect on the adoption rate.

The results revealed that adoption of CC depends on various factors such as persuasion (time-saving, cost-saving and word of mouth) and constraint factors (security and financial loss). However, it is seen that the adoption rate is very sensitive to changes in adoption per contact and word of mouth. Further, the adopter firm has a quicker time to market, which gives an added advantage to the firm. Also, with CC services, a firm can fulfill its projects or clients' requirements with little to no upfront investment in information technology (IT) services.

Lack of security, standardization and undefined service-level agreements are a few pressing issues that make it difficult for firms to evaluate the performance and reliability of services. Hence, immediate attention is needed to make transparent policies on CC and its services, thereby building trust.

This is the first and only work that has tried to explore and empirically test the dynamics of critical factors while making an adoption decision, considering both the adopter and provider perspectives. This study shows the journey of a firm, starting from being a prospective adopter to an adopter and continuous user. The work also empirically tested how adopters of technology benefit from the technology.

Describes the approach developed by the authors in using total quality management philosophies and techniques to address the issues and problems arising from IT service provision. Outlines IT service quality issues and discusses MARQUIS (Managing Requirements and Quality in Services), which can be used to specify users′ requirements and develop service products to fulfil these requirements. Provides a Service Code of Practice (SCOP), and suggests that both it and MARQUIS will be of great benefit to the IT industry and its customers in years to come.

The purpose of this study is to estimate revealed comparative advantage and normalized revealed comparative advantage (NRCA) indices of India’s computer and information services (CIS) export competitiveness with regard to information technology (IT) competing developing nations, such as China, Philippines, Malaysia and Brazil.

Using annual data of total exports for CIS, transportation (TNS), travel (TVL) and insurance (INS) services under service categories of the balance of payment, the present study estimates the pattern of comparative advantage (CA) in India’s CIS exports with respect to IT competing developing nations such as China, Philippines, Malaysia and Brazil from 2000 to 2018. The choice of the study period is determined by the availability of consistent data on IT service exports of these nations. The study also estimates the export position of CIS export in comparison to India’s traditionally strong commercial services export of TNS, TVL and INS during the study period.

Both the indices showed that India had a strong CA in CIS compared to the selected nations, indicating India’s relative export performance to be stronger than that of China, Malaysia, Philippines and Brazil. The cross-service index showed that India’s relative specialization level in CIS with respect to the world’s average specialization level was stronger than its relative specialization level in TNS, TVL and INS services. Furthermore, The NRCA cross-nation index showed that India’s NRCA index score has been declining since 2010 with respect to these nations, which implied a decline in the competitiveness of CIS. On the other hand, NRCA has increased in the case of Philippines, Malaysia and Brazil for most of the period post-2010.

IT is a dynamic area of economic activity, and when the pace of change is so rapid, the relevance of individual factors can change over time. The study period is also limited to the available data.

The paper has implications for attaining sustainability in IT export growth. It is suggested that policies are directed at enhancing the overall performance of IT sector.

The novelty of the present study lies in the estimation of India’s competitiveness in IT exports in relation to the group of reference countries. With its policy recommendations, this research is helping to shape the sustainability of the IT sector.

This study aims to explore how information technology (IT) companies that provide professional information systems/IT solutions to business clients can enhance employees’ service innovation performance.

Self-reported data were collected from 251 employees over two periods, along with their supervisor-reported data. The model was tested using structural equation modeling.

Employees’ engagement fully mediates the impact of innovative self-efficacy and social identification on service innovation performance. Employees’ customer orientation and feeling trusted both strengthen the transformation of service innovation engagement into service innovation performance. However, IT employees’ embeddedness, unexpectedly, significantly weakens the link between engagement and performance in business-to-business (B2B) service innovation contexts.

The sample was collected in Taiwan, where the IT industry is dominant and employees’ values and team interactions are influenced by Chinese culture. Data drawn from a single industry, involving a particular culture, limit claims of external validity.

Managers can encourage participative decision-making, or hold official platforms where peers and clients can exchange ideas, leading to higher levels of feeling trusted and customer orientation, which both strengthen the link between service innovation engagement and performance. Moreover, highly embedded members can easily discuss novel ideas with team members and obtain improvement-oriented feedback, which ensures highly embedded members can keep focusing on service innovation.

This study provides a more nuanced picture of predictive factors for individual innovation behavior in B2B service innovation contexts in which employees provide business clients with professional, innovative IT solutions through team-based projects.

This paper explores some of the issues surrounding the development of Internet services in public library children's services. It notes that IT services have generally been undeveloped in children's libraries and that this trend must not continue with networked computer services. It recognises that the lack of net‐worked computer service provision in children's libraries may lead to them seeming ‘irrelevant’ and ‘old fashioned’ to their users. The paper focuses on literature and literacy issues in relation to information and communication technology (ICT). It notes that few libraries have been using ICT to support their literature‐based services. One possible service model for the integration of ICT into literature services, UKOLN's Treasure Island Web site, is described and the results of an evaluation of it interpreted. The paper concludes looking forward to the Stories From the Web project which will develop the Treasure Island model further.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize an information technology (IT) initiative at Hilti Corporation that began with a local IT need and ended with the global transformation of the company’s customer service processes and infrastructures. The authors highlight 12 lessons learned from the transformation, which Hilti referred to as the Global Contact Center (GCC) program.

The authors analyze Hilti’s GCC program based on first-hand experience. Hilti applied an innovative, wave-like implementation approach that facilitated a fast roll-out, fostered peer-to-peer knowledge transfer, and helped to overcome reluctance to change.

The analysis of Hilti’s approach to its new customer service management reveals a number of simple, yet, critical lessons learned regarding leveraging IT-driven business value through global process transformation.

The case report can help researchers to further theorize about IT-enabled process transformation. The GCC program resulted in significant improvements in the performance and quality of customer service processes and enabled transparent reporting and performance measurement on a global scale.

Overall, the GCC case provides an illustrative example of successful process transformation at the global level that also demonstrates implementation challenges. As such, the case report can help practitioners in planning and executing similar projects toward customer service excellence.

Hilti’s GCC case not only provides fresh insights into a successful process transformation. As it focusses on customer service, it also concerns an application area that has received little in the way of attention from process transformation research.

A multitude of factors influence the information technology outsourcing (ITO) decision. Organizations must systematically evaluate these factors prior to making the ITO decision. The purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth analysis toward understanding the critical factors in affecting ITO decision in the context of e-banking services.

The effect of technological, organizational, and environmental attributes on e-banking services outsourcing decision were investigated in this paper. The study was carried out using the quantitative research methodology based on a survey of 23 banks. The partial least squares technique was utilized as the method of data analysis.

The results of the data analysis illustrated that nine out of 11 assumed factors (i.e. perceived complexity, perceived cost, service observability to the client, cultural fit between client and supplier, perceived loss of organizational knowledge, prior outsourcing experience, external pressure, market volatility, and suppliers’ power) influence the outsourcing decision of e-banking services. The findings also confirmed that the nature of the service and client IT capabilities did not exert any influence on the outsourcing decision.

The study is among the first kind of ITO decision research which empirically investigates the effect of service observability, cultural fit, perceived loss of organizational knowledge, external pressure, market volatility, and suppliers’ power amongst other factors on the ITO decision. The findings from this study provide insights for the banks and service providers to better understand the factors affecting the outsourcing decisions of e-banking services in contexts of less developed countries. Implications based on a specific situation of the Iranian banking sector is also proposed.

Despite existing advances in information technology infrastructure services (ITISs), there remains no consensus in the literature regarding what dimensions or criteria are best suited for the measurement of their quality. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap, proposing a methodological approach to measuring the quality of ITISs, as perceived by users.

Cronbach’s α and item-total correlations were used to measure the reliability of the questionnaire; multiple linear regression analysis was employed to determine the items (criteria) most related to the quality of ITISs; and finally, importance–performance analysis was conducted to determine the most critical criteria in service provision. An exploratory study was conducted to evaluate the quality of ITISs at a Brazilian university.

Control of the activities of the information technology (IT) team, periodic maintenance of hardware and software, the security policy and the skill of the labor affect the quality of services most, relative to the dimensions of infrastructure, people and processes.

The results indicate what dimensions and items should be considered by IT managers to improve the quality of ITISs. Special attention should be paid to the effective use of equipment, software and network infrastructure: it should be ensured that these are in good working order and can be utilized by users who expect to be trained to take advantage of their functions.

This paper shows how to integrate relevant techniques to assess the quality of ITISs. An original set of criteria to evaluate the quality of ITISs, derived from a systematic review of the literature, is suggested.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key elements of professional identity in service work in order to provide more in-depth theoretical explanations as to why service workers do as they do while co-creating service.

This study takes a multi-perspective on professional identity, i.e. using both an employee and a customer perspective, arguing that the phenomenon mainly consists of what these interactants jointly do during the service interaction and of the meanings that are attributed to it. The authors draw on a detailed empirical study of professionals working at a customer centre. Methodologically, the study is based on practice theory, which helps us to illuminate and analyse both the micro practices and the meaning attributed to the professional identity of service workers.

The key elements of professional identity in service work are outlined within a framework that describes and explains three different facets of the service workers’ professional identity, i.e. as a core (i.e. individual resources, cognitive understanding, interaction), as conditions (i.e. service prerequisites), and as contour (i.e. demeanour and functions).

The findings are based on an empirical data set from a public transport customer centre. As the results are limited to one context, they do not provide statistical generalizability. Although limited to one service industry, the findings may still be of high relevance to a wide range of service organisations.

The study shows the significance of managers not just talking about the importance of being service-minded; more exactly, a wide range of service prerequisites, beyond cognitive understanding, needs to be in place. It is crucial that service workers are given the time to develop their contextual knowledge of their customers, and of other parts of the service organisation.

This study offers original empirical contributions concerning the key elements of professional identity. An alternative conceptualization of professional identity is provided, through which the paper adds to service research, explaining more specifically what kinds of knowledge and skills are in use during the co-creation of services.